Hayden Perno is a coach and writer. While completing a medical and health science degree, studying subjects like neuroscience, physics, chemistry, and philosophy, he began producing weekly blogs, articles for various websites, eBooks, and YouTube videos. As the years passed, his love for reading, writing, science, philosophy, and mythology took over, leading him to dedicating more and more time to honing his fiction craft, entering short story competitions, completing a handful of books, before writing The Hunt for Time, a story about a boy travelling through the cosmos in a desperate quest to free himself from the shackles of time.
What inspired you to be a writer?
I don’t think any one event inspired me. I’ve always read and written things. Before dedicating my writing time to fiction, I’d spent 6-7 years writing (almost) daily (blog, articles for websites, podcast, YouTube video essay channel, several eBooks related to health and fitness). During this time, I wrote fiction on and off, eventually transitioning to dedicating the majority of my free time to it, where I began entering short story comps, completed 2.5 novels, before starting The Hunt for Time.
What prompted you to write 'The Hunt for Time'?
Banter between a client and I, where we tried outdoing each other with our Casio watch capabilities. The simple joke sparked something in my mind, and I abandoned another manuscript I was working on to flesh out the idea. This was no doubt fuelled by the fact I was reading Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace at the time.
Do you have any more books in the pipeline?
Currently working on the second and third books in the Ralph Ridley trilogy. I also have a few “completed” (including non-fiction), some shelved, some ready to get started on.
What is your professional background?
Bachelor of Medical and Health Science graduate, gym owner, coach.
Any advice you’d like to give aspiring writers?
Write for yourself. Write without the end goal of being published as the sole reason you sit at that keyboard each day. In other words, enjoy the process, for writing is an often lonely, difficult activity (hobby) to become competent in. But if you would write no matter what, through good times and bad, if you love the unbounded creativity your cerebral cortex can concoct, if you love to continuously evolve your skills alongside the evolution of your stories and characters, don’t quit.
Keep writing.
Who/what inspires you?
Books, films, music, podcasts, people, arguments, travelling, life lessons that keep pinging until you absorb them.
What are your hobbies, interests and favourite books?
Some hobbies/interests: read, write, learn, hang with fam, beach, travel, jiu-jitsu.
Some favourite books: I Am Legend, Flowers for Algernon, Laurus, A Clockwork Orange, Snow Crash, Altered Carbon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Slaughterhouse-Five, and I will stop there.
How can readers contact you?
Social media: @haydenperno
Website: https://haydenperno.com/contact/
Contact via: Hawkeye Contact Page
